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Senate to take sex-ad website to court

WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to hold a sex-ad website in contempt of Congress — the first time in more than two decades the Senate has gone to court to enforce a subpoena.

WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to hold a sex-ad website in contempt of Congress — the first time in more than two decades the Senate has gone to court to enforce a subpoena.

The lawmakers spearheading the contempt proposal, Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said executives at the commercial advertising website Backpage.com have refused to comply with their investigation into how they screen online ads for warning signs of child-sex trafficking.

Portman and McCaskill said their probe has uncovered evidence suggesting employees at Backpage.com are either ignoring red flags of child sex-trafficking or editing the ads to hide evidence of such activity.

More than 400 cases of child sex trafficking across 47 states have been linked to the website in recent years, including at least 13 in Ohio and at least six in Missouri. Those figures stem from a probe, launched by Portman and McCaskill, who lead the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs' investigatory subcommittee.

The Senate action will allow lawmakers to "truly find out what if any role Backpage has had in the highly illegal and immoral practice of trafficking children for sex," McCaskill said. “We are fully committed to getting to the bottom of this company’s business practices and policies for preventing the trafficking of children, and we will get these answers.”

The contempt resolution passed by a vote of 96-0.

Steve Ross, partner at the law firm Akin Gump and counsel to Backpage.com, said the company welcomes the Senate vote, so Backpage.com can press its First Amendment defense in court.

"For nine months, Backpage.com has respectfully, and repeatedly, asked the Senate to take the steps necessary to permit Backpage.com to obtain a review of the constitutional issues by judges, rather than by the same political figures who issued the subpoenas," Ross said in an emailed statement. "Backpage.com looks forward to a proper consideration of the important First Amendment constitutional issues by the judiciary — the branch of government charged with protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans."

With the Senate vote, the chamber's legal counsel will now file a civil action against Backpage.com in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Senate lawsuit would request a judge's order to enforce the subcommittee's subpoena.

If a judge sides with the Senate, the court could compel Backpage.com's cooperation with the Senate's committee's investigation or impose financial penalties for failing to do so.